Yunho felt himself being shaken awake.

"Hyung," whispered Changmin.

Yunho opened his eyes a bit.

"Hmm?"

The sun wasn't up yet; Yunho's room was still pitch-black.

"Let's go swimming."

Swimming?

Yunho shook his head and closed his eyes. "Changmin. I don't –"

"Just for fun. Let's not do any real training. I really just want to go with you."

Yunho opened his eyes again and looked at Changmin. "What time is it?"

"It's a little bit past three."

"In the morning?" groaned Yunho. "I'm sleeping."

"As if it matters what time it is. You've been sleeping all day for the past week," Changmin pointed out.

Yunho sighed.

"No."

"Please? I need a drive to the pool."

So that was what it was.

Yunho considered refusing – why did Changmin have to swim at this ungodly hour? – but slowly sat up.

"You've been walking to the pool all week."

"I want a drive today," whined Changmin. "It's really dark."

Yunho almost said no, but then he remembered the time last year when Changmin had told Yunho that he was jealous that Yunho always had someone take him to and from swim practice – and Yunho sighed, defeated.

"Okay. Fine. I'll drive you."

Changmin's eyes lit up.

"Yes! Let's go!"

"Okay. Just give me a second to get up. God."

Before Yunho knew it, he was in the car with the cheerful and excited Changmin in the passenger seat.

"It's been lonely the past week, swimming alone," mused Changmin.

"Swimming isn't a team sport," replied Yunho gruffly. "It's what you signed up for."

"It is a team sport though. We're on the same team."

"Yeah, the same arbitrary team in which we compete against each other. You should switch to water polo or something if you want to play on a real team."

Changmin pouted and crossed his arms. "Well, I still like it when there are other people in the pool with me."

"I'm not going to swim with you today, if that's what you're implying."

Changmin rolled his eyes. "Okay, fine. Whatever."

They got to the pool in a few minutes. Yunho stopped the car in front of the entrance, but Changmin didn't get out.

"We're here," said Yunho, looking pointedly at Changmin.

"I know. You should park."

"No, I'm going back home. Get out and call me when you're done and I'll come pick you up."

"Hyung, come in with me," says Changmin, pouting.

"I gave you the ride," said Yunho. "I never said I was coming into the pool with you."

"I never said you'd have to swim if you came in with me."

"Shim Changmin, get out, or I'm turning the car around and driving right back home."

"You can just watch. And coach me. You're the best freestyle swimmer in the country after all."

Yunho sighed and rubbed his forehead. "You're such a pain."

"That's what roommates are for, right?" grinned Changmin. "C'mon. I'll pay for parking."

Yunho groaned, but turned into the parking lot.

The pool was empty, obviously, and still dark; there wasn't a single ripple in the vast pool. Only a couple of the lights were on in the pool, shining into the water. It looked so much like the pool back at the Village, before he started his nightly training.

Yunho swallowed and turned to the side of the pool and found himself a plastic chair. Changmin was already wearing his jammers under his clothes, so he just stripped his jacket and his pants off and jumped into the pool without anything else.

Yunho sighed and opened Changmin's swim bag. He dug through the overly large bag until he found Changmin's caps and his goggles, and threw them into the water for him.

Changmin didn't bother retrieving any of his things though, and splashed around in the pool playfully for a while. After he apparently deemed himself sufficiently wet, he swam over to the side of the pool, grabbed onto the side of the pool and looked at Yunho with twinkling eyes.

"Are you gonna coach me today? Or are you going to swim?"

Yunho sighed at Changmin warily. "I just wanna sit here."

Changmin pouted. "You might as well do something since you're here."

Yunho shook his head.

"I'll just watch. You swim."

"Why won't you swim?" said Changmin, his face scrunching up with disappointment.

"I didn't bring my jammers."

"You can borrow a pair of mine! I happened to bring a spare!"

"Changmin…"

Changmin sighed. "Fine. We might as well just go home then. Help me out."

Yunho raised his eyebrows. "Listen, if you just wanted to get wet, you could have just taken a shower at home."

Changmin shook his head. "I actually just wanted to come because I wanted to swim with you again."

Yunho thought he knew what Changmin was talking about; the time when they'd both fallen into the National Team pool and had swam for fun.

The first and only time that they'd swum for fun.

"Help me out," said Changmin, looking dejected. Yunho hesitated, but then stood slowly and walked towards Changmin and took his outstretched hand.

 Yunho would have been lying if he had said that he was surprised that it was Changmin who pulled, and pulled him into the water.

Yunho cringed as he fell into the water, ready for that feeling of discomfort as it came in contact with the skin. The feeling of the water pulling him into the depths below, the feeling of breathlessness and the restraint, and the cold, harsh splashes of water against his face –

But it never came.

Below the surface, it was the same as before; the blue, tranquil, soft, smooth waters that Yunho had fallen in love with.

Yunho shrugged out of his windbreaker and kicked his shoes off underwater, because it was all slowing him down.

Yunho let out the bubbles of breath in his lungs and resurfaced.

When he blinked the droplets of water from his eyes, he realized that Changmin was staring at him.

"What," said Yunho, suddenly feeling self-conscious about his swim.

"I thought you'd yell at me," said Changmin with an amused smile. "But then you just, like, took your clothes off underwater, like you've been wanting to swim for ages but you didn't because no one's pulled you in."

"Well," muttered Yunho, shaking the water droplets from his hair. "I thought I'd yell at you too."

They both swam – splashed each other and chased each other around, pushed each other into the water and laughed.

Yunho didn't know how much time had passed, and it still remained dark outside, but both Changmin and Yunho got out of breath after a while, and so they decided to come out and sit together on the edge of the deck with their feet in the water.

"It's strange, isn't it?" said Changmin.

"What is?"

"That people glorify something as primitive as swimming."

Primitive.

Yunho clenched his teeth.

That was what this sport was, really; it was about kicking and flailing as fast as you can to be able to get yourself across a body of water without drowning.

Yunho reached into the pool with his hand, scooped up a bit of it in his hand, and then let the water fall through his fingers.

It was primitive.

"Changmin…"

Changmin looked up.

"Why did you choose swimming?"

Changmin tilted his head towards Yunho.

"What do you mean? I already told you, like, a year ago how I ended up here."

"But you haven't told me why you swim, and not do something else. You could have picked any other sport."

Changmin chuckled.

"Well… when I started swimming, I always felt… safe in the water," said Changmin. "Like the water around me would protect me from anything. It felt comfortable, like I belonged there more than on land."

Changmin kicked his foot up, and a splash of clear water drops flew up, and glistened in the moonlight before falling back down into the pool, creating rippled upon the calm surface.

"It was a bit different when I started swimming competitively. In a way, I didn't feel as safe, and I stopped loving swimming so much. I started to swim because I had to, to survive. But I knew that if I wanted to break the cycle, this was the only way. And, before I made the team, I thought, maybe if I became famous, maybe my parents would come to find me." He let out a small laugh. "I guess I was too hopeful, because they didn't."

Yunho bit his lip.

"So… you don't love swimming anymore?"

Changmin turned his head towards Yunho. And then he smiled ruefully. "I don't know."

Yunho sighed.

Changmin looked at Yunho. "How about you? Why do you swim? With your physique, I'm sure you could have been really good at other sports too."

Yunho hesitated.

He started swimming when he was so young that he couldn't remember his first day in the pool – he just remembered that it was one of those mommy-and-me classes. But he vividly remembered when he has finished his basic recreational classes and his parents hadn't enrolled him into the next class up. Yunho remembered crying and begging his parents to let him continue swimming competitively, and only then realizing how much Yunho loved swimming, they had let him train with a coach.

But why did Yunho want to swim so much back then?

"I don't know why I swim," said Yunho quietly. "I'm trying to figure it out."

Changmin smiled and reached for Yunho's hand. He found it and squeezed.

"I don't think you have to know why," he said. "It doesn't matter why you swim, like you said before. If you like swimming better than not swimming, you should swim."

"But I'm not sure," murmured Yunho. "I'm not sure if I like swimming better than not swimming."

 Changmin turned his head to look at Yunho.

"I wish it were as easy as telling you to just quit," said Changmin quietly. "But…"

Changmin trailed off, but Yunho finished the sentence.

"The only thing I know how to do is swim," whispered Yunho. "I can't do anything else."